It all comes down to this: A rematch of No. 1 vs. No. 2

The college football season is just about over. Just one final game to go. And we all know what game that is: Alabama vs. LSU on Monday night. The rematch.

There’s been plenty of debate about the BCS championship and if two teams from the same conference should be able to play in it.

There’s no doubt the SEC is a tough conference and fields some of the best teams each year. All you have to do to is take a look at the bowl schedule year in and year out to see several SEC teams in the top bowl games.

I won’t get started on the fact that there are too many bowl games these days and that teams with 6-6 records should not be in bowl games. That’s for another day.

Today we can also look at the two South Carolina teams of prominence — South Carolina and Clemson — and argue until we’re blue in the face which one is better.

If you’ve seen those license plates with “house divided” you know that intra-state rivalries run deep in most states. South Carolina has its 11-win-season Gamecocks and the mighty Clemson Tigers.

The last time I lived in South Carolina it was in the Upstate and people there leaned heavily toward the school just down Interstate 85 or they seemed to. Maybe because Clemson was physically closer to Spartanburg than USC in Columbia.

It also probably boosted Clemson’s profile even more when the Carolina Panthers played its first home games at Tiger stadium instead of Columbia while the Charlotte stadium was under construction. The ties the Richardson family have to Clemson and Wofford College in Spartanburg played a role in this decision.

Wofford — a small, private school — started to make a name for itself back in the mid-1990s. Wofford became home to the Panthers’ training camp and like Clemson gained more national recognition.

National recognition is something the Gamecocks and Tigers received this year. Both had tremendous seasons and the Gamecocks won the rivalry game and have bragging rights for another year.

USC won its bowl game and Clemson did not. I personally am a Dabo Swinney fan since he’s an Alabama Crimson Tide graduate and my allegiance is to the Crimson Tide of Tuscaloosa. Swinney also shows so much enthusiasm for what he does it’s contagious on the sidelines. He’s a young guy for a head coach of a major college football team and you can tell he puts his heart into it — and then some.

Steve Spurrier for the Gamecocks has taken a team that used to be near the bottom of the SEC and made it one to be reckoned with. Spurrier also obviously loves what he does and prefers to coach college players. Both coaches are keepers.

The coach at the top of my list today is Alabama’s Nick Saban. He’s the man people love to hate. How many college football coaches have been on the cover of Forbes magazine or have coached a couple of different schools to a national championship. Not many.

My money is on Saban and the Tide. Do I think the game will live up to all the hype and make the naysayers go away? Never. But it will be fun to watch. I do hope one of the South Carolina teams get to this particular bowl game in the near future. That will make living in the Palmetto State even sweeter this time around.

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